{"id":890,"date":"2007-10-08T13:50:03","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T17:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-ne"},"modified":"2007-10-08T13:50:03","modified_gmt":"2007-10-08T17:50:03","slug":"three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve finished three books about exotic cities with a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious population.<\/p>\n

The first is Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 The publisher pushes this as essential reading for tourists who want to learn about Istanbul.\u00a0 About half of the text of the book is devoted to the author’s feelings and memories of childhood.\u00a0 He loves his mother and is fascinated by her makeup and clothing.\u00a0 He loves (male) Turkish writers who are captivated by the beauty and sexuality of teenage boys.\u00a0 He is often melancholy, even after sex (perhaps because his partner wasn’t a teenage boy?).\u00a0 You would be forgiven if you thought that this was a lost work of Marcel Proust.\u00a0 The other half of the book has some interesting information about Istanbul.<\/p>\n

Pamuk claims that the entire city suffers from melancholy and despair because of the collapse of the Ottoman empire and subsequent decline in the city’s relative fortunes.\u00a0 He celebrates the contributions of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews to the city’s culture and mourns the departure of these ethnic groups (Pamuk notes that Istanbul was more than half non-Muslims at the beginning of the 20th century and nearly 100 percent Muslim at the end; he says that the Christians and Jews were encouraged to leave after their property was confiscated in the 1940s and by riots in the 1950s that destroyed their homes and shops).\u00a0 Stories of ships colliding in the Bosphorus\u00a0are captivating (you have to sail through downtown Istanbul to get from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea).<\/p>\n

Pamuk’s own family has suffered a decline in their fortunes, but he doesn’t seem to notice the rise of other families.\u00a0 The latest shopping malls are grander than any palace that the Sultans ever built.\u00a0 The bridges spanning the Bosphorus are engineering achievements beyond anything the Ottomans might have dreamed of.\u00a0 The wealth of modern day Turkish businessmen exceeds anything the Ottomans had.\u00a0 It is true that the Ottomans ruled an empire, but it was an empire mostly of illiterate peasants who couldn’t pay much in the way of taxes.\u00a0 Modern day Istanbul is at the center of a powerful growing economy of 70+ million people, nearly all of whom are better educated and better employed than their 19th Century counterparts.<\/p>\n

Summary: an interesting book for fans of Pamuk’s other writing, not particularly instructive about Istanbul.<\/p>\n

The next book is Justine<\/em>, the first novel in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet.<\/a>\u00a0 The exact time of the novel isn’t specified, but they have cars and\u00a0don’t have antibiotics, so 1920s or 1930s seems like a good guess.\u00a0 The city has little industry and people don’t work\u00a0very hard\u00a0so they spend all of their time having\u00a0sex with each other, regardless of marital or economic status.\u00a0 Unlike with Pamuk’s book, the sex tends to be heterosexual.\u00a0 There is a lot of mingling among Europeans, Arabs, Copts (descendants of the ancient Egyptians who built the Pyramids), Turks, and Jews.\u00a0 Poverty is a common condition, one that often leads to arrangements of a sexual nature.\u00a0 Love is understood by all concerned to be a transitory phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Summary: Too bad these folks did not have access to modern scientific research, such as http:\/\/www.theonion.com\/content\/news\/study_casual_sex_only_rewarding<\/a><\/p>\n

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Lucette Lagnado is the most educational of the three.\u00a0 She chronicles a century of her family’s history in a way that illuminates the general via the particular.\u00a0 Her family starts off in Syria in the early\u00a020th\u00a0Century.\u00a0 The breakup of the Ottoman Empire has enabled the local Arabs to indulge their passion for anti-Jewish violence (the Ottomans discouraged violence against taxpayers; they didn’t\u00a0care what\u00a0religion someone\u00a0practiced as long as he or she paid\u00a0taxes).\u00a0 The family flees to Cairo where her father grows up to enjoy a fantastic social life, mostly enjoyed after dark and with a lot of different women.\u00a0 The city is a paradise of neighborliness and opportunity created by the mixture of well educated and sophisticated foreigners and religious minorities.\u00a0 In his early 40s, Lagnado’s father marries a beautiful\u00a020-year-old and installs her in his mother’s house where she becomes miserable from isolation and his nighttime wanderings and presumed infidelity.\u00a0 As an Arab nationalist government supplants the monarchy, the Arab Cairenes become increasingly hostile towards their Christian, Jewish, and foreign\u00a0neighbors to the point where most of the non-Arab Muslims have to leave by the early 1960s.<\/p>\n

Jews are allowed to leave with no more than $30 in wealth, plus a few suitcases full of clothing.\u00a0 Lagnado’s family of six shows up in Paris with $200 and eventually manages to make its way to the shabbier neighborhoods of Brooklyn.\u00a0 Their relatives end up in Israel where they trade the pleasures of the city for a life of hard labor on a dusty kibbutz farm.<\/p>\n

Many of the events in the story are sad.\u00a0 Babies die.\u00a0 Babies are sold because a family doesn’t have enough money to feed them.\u00a0 Italian relatives are shipped off to German death camps, never to be heard from again.\u00a0 The world was a much more consequential place then.\u00a0 Yet Lagnado’s prose is never sad and, as you might expect from a Wall Street Journal<\/em> journalist, there is little fat that could be trimmed from her language.<\/p>\n

The 870,000 Jews who were expelled from Arab countries between 1940 and 1960 are a statistic (to paraphrase Joseph Stalin); the Lagnado’s family expulsion is a lot more instructive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve finished three books about exotic cities with a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious population. The first is Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City.\u00a0 The publisher pushes this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThree books about an exotic polyglot Near East - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve finished three books about exotic cities with a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious population. The first is Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City.\u00a0 The publisher pushes this […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-10-08T17:50:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"philg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"philg\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/2007\\\/10\\\/08\\\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/2007\\\/10\\\/08\\\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"philg\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\"},\"headline\":\"Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East\",\"datePublished\":\"2007-10-08T17:50:03+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/2007\\\/10\\\/08\\\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":917,\"commentCount\":1,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/2007\\\/10\\\/08\\\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/2007\\\/10\\\/08\\\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/2007\\\/10\\\/08\\\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\\\/\",\"name\":\"Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2007-10-08T17:50:03+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/2007\\\/10\\\/08\\\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/2007\\\/10\\\/08\\\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/2007\\\/10\\\/08\\\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/\",\"name\":\"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\",\"description\":\"A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months...\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":[\"Person\",\"Organization\"],\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\",\"name\":\"philg\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/11\\\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/11\\\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/11\\\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":2047,\"height\":2560,\"caption\":\"philg\"},\"logo\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2025\\\/11\\\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg\"},\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/philip.greenspun.com\\\/blog\\\/author\\\/philg\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog","og_description":"I’ve finished three books about exotic cities with a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious population. The first is Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City.\u00a0 The publisher pushes this […]","og_url":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/","og_site_name":"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog","article_published_time":"2007-10-08T17:50:03+00:00","author":"philg","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"philg","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/"},"author":{"name":"philg","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e"},"headline":"Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East","datePublished":"2007-10-08T17:50:03+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/"},"wordCount":917,"commentCount":1,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/","url":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/","name":"Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-10-08T17:50:03+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/08\/three-books-about-an-exotic-polyglot-near-east\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Three books about an exotic polyglot Near East"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/","name":"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog","description":"A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months...","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e","name":"philg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg","url":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg","width":2047,"height":2560,"caption":"philg"},"logo":{"@id":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/20210525-philip-greenspun-sea-turtle-release-scaled.jpg"},"url":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/author\/philg\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paokyZ-em","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}